we're familiar with each other's screams
by blue-starryeyed-songjay
Summary: -in which Johanna is tortured with Peeta in the Capitol and they break. Oh, how they break. oneshot. implied Everlark and hints of GaleJohanna.


**I don't own anything. The Hunger Games belongs to Suzanne Collins (Y U KILL FINNICK?)**

* * *

><p>'Tell me,' hissed the reptilian man, 'tell me everything.'<p>

She gasps, struggles, musters up all the courage she had and lashes out, her long, lean legs flying out and they almost hit the side of his head before his cold, clammy hands grabbed her leg. Fingers stroked her leg tantalisingly, venturing further to the inside of her thigh before climbing back up again.

'Not so good without your axe, are you?' Snow murmured in her ear.

Her reply was spitting in his narrowed eyes.

'You'll pay for that, girl. Peeta?'

Johanna breathes in through her gritted teeth. _Peeta? _

'Oh? But...' Snow hesitates before spitting out the next three words, 'didn't you know? We've got the Boy with the Bread too.'

Peacekeepers gaggle around a staggering person, before parting.

'Peeta,' Johanna exhales. 'They got you.'

His eyes are unblinking, unseeing, glazed over.

'Pull it.' Snow says smoothly, 'pull the lever next to you, Peeta, and everything will be sorted.'

Johanna's eyes focus on the lever on the wall. Peeta turns, and the Peacekeepers grab his arms, forcing him to place his hand on the head. He resists, screaming profanities and manages to knock one out before he's injected with morphling.

When he falls into a drugged stupor, his hand drags the lever down. Water douses Johanna sweating body. Drops of water fall into her open mouth. She can't tell if it's the icy water, or her own tears.

Jolts of electricity fire through her veins, ripping her body apart, making her jerk crazily.

She refuses to scream. She refuses to give him anything that'll make _him_ happy.

* * *

><p>It reminds her of the time she refused to sell her body.<p>

Snow was quiet, listening to her fiery protests before he smiled sinisterly.

'But what's the point of a Victor if we _can't show her off?' _he whispered, accenting each words forcefully. Johanna shivers.

'I'm sorry to hear that you won't...play around,' murmurs the snake-man, 'but I'm sure we can come to some arrangement.'

The next morning, Johanna walks into her house in the District 7 Victor's Village to find her family and her lover dead, with roses petals covering their broken bodies.

'No,' she whispers, 'no!'

She won the Games to save them. But now she's lost.

Snow's the first one to buy her. Whilst he touches her- _he shouldn't be touching her there- _and whispers instructions in her ear- _what did he say to her family before he killed them?- _and caresses her legs, Johanna remains impassive.

But the anger is building.

* * *

><p>'Any news on the rebellion, Miss Mason?'<p>

'Fuck off.'

'Language. For that, I think...twenty minutes.'

_Twenty minutes?_

She looks up to the ceiling, to realise that drops of water had been beating down on her skin surreptitiously, landing in time to her pounding heartbeat. Her chest and face is drenched in the salty liquid.

And again, again with the fire, the burning electric shocks.

'Tell me, Miss Mason. Tell me, or I'll do it in a bath, next time.'

Johanna stays quiet. Blood rushes through her body and it stops, oh, it's stops. The loss of pain is amazing. It's magnificent.

_Bom. Boom. Boom._

_'_I said twenty minutes, idiot!'

Gunshots. Creaking of a lever. And again, the pain, the electricity. Screams. Who's the one screaming?

It's her, she realises. Her inhuman, piercing screams echo around the room.

Snow smiles, eyebrows raising in polite notice of her writhing, sweat covered body. He takes pleasure in her cries.

Twenty minutes. Every two minutes, three buckets of water is dropped on her aching body. Twenty minutes.

* * *

><p>Her throat is dry.<p>

She refuses to drink water, not after the last time. They forced her to drink muddy water and then electroucted her from the inside. Since then, the only thing she'll drink is her own spit.

She knows she's safe from herself.

No words are spoken between Snow and Johanna. It's silent, apart from Johanna's muffled cries.

* * *

><p>And when she vomits, it tastes of roses.<p>

* * *

><p>She broke when Peeta started screaming next to her. Peacekeepers surround his body, injecting him with something. They show him clips of their Games, editing it so she looks like she saved him out of pity. Peeta refuses to crumble under the pressure.<p>

Johanna does.

Her knees give out, landing her in a pool of ice-cold water. She braces herself for the pain that should come. Something- or someone- strikes her across the face.

'Get up,' orders the man.

'You can't tell me w-what to do,' Johanna splutters. Her mouth was dry, and that was comforting, but the water has made her throat moist. _Where's the pain?_

'You haven't got your axe, Miss Mason, and I'm the one with this-' he brandishes a stick that buzzes with electricity- 'thing from history. It's called a _taser, _and I'm not afraid to use it.'

'Go ahead.' Johanna smirks. The confidence is a bravado, and they both know it. Her smug smile falters when the man steps forward and jabs her experimentally in the side.

She screams.

* * *

><p>'Loverboy.'<p>

'Don't call me that.'

'Fine. Bread boy, we've got to get out of here.'

'Why?'

'The Rebellion, Peeta, or the Uprising, the 'It's about time someone did something about this shitty life' Realisation. Whatever you want to call it. We've got to go back.'

'To Katniss?'

'To Katniss.'

'No!'

'She's not dead, loverboy, and you can still bake for her.'

'Don't you see? She's a mutt, Johanna!'

Her heart breaks.

* * *

><p>Almost everyday, she's doused in the icy water and electrocuted.<p>

She can tell Snow's close to doing something drastic. Her ears prickle every time he passes their cell, talking about 'they should've came by now' and 'we should just gift-wrap him and drop them on their doorstep'.

* * *

><p>'Johanna? I've managed to get some water.'<p>

She jerks at the mention of _it_.

Weren't Victors supposed to be stronger than this?

* * *

><p>'Johanna Mason?'<p>

She knows that face.

'Johanna? It's me, Gale. We know each other through Kat-'

'Shut up.' Johanna hisses unexpectedly. 'Shut up and get me out of this hellhole.'

Gale's mouth quirks slightly. 'Yes, ma'am.'

His fingers are quick, making light work of the heavy rope tying her to the metal bed. He offers her a smile every time she whimpers. When he is finished, Johanna pulls Gale towards her.

'Don't mention Katniss.' she warns. 'Our baker has a new perspective on her.'

She lets go of Gale's collar and they begin working on Peeta's chains together.

* * *

><p>The alarms go off.<p>

Guards- _District Two,_ Johanna notes lazily_- _throw buckets of water at the trio.

Her body begins to involuntarily jerk and she blacks out.

* * *

><p>District 13's helped her, in a way. The rich soup, the smells, the occasional smile of a fellow District 7 citizen...<p>

It almost feels like home.

* * *

><p>And then they flood the street and it's back to square one.<p> 


End file.
